Monday Post ~ April 4, 2011

by Miranda on April 4, 2011

“All who are creative, in whatever way, are doing something very important to the well-being of the world.” ~Sandra Chantry

What creative work would you like to accomplish this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic task or a milestone to reach for. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Outcome: Yes! Website live, began to dig into survey responses, calendar function of Studio Mothers up and running, Creative Every Day nest projects finished, homework, coaching, Project Life, journaling, reading. All in all, it was a heck of a week in the productivity department!

This week: The things on my list are largely in support of my creativity, not pure creativity per se. Begin to return my Life Assessment responses (I’d like to get to at least five of them), knock off a writing assignment for CCA, write my CCA profile, begin drafting newsletter. Continue reading Jennifer Lee’s Right Brain Business Plan (and complete a few more of the exercises). And the regular slew: homework, coaching, Project Life, journaling, reading. Spring fever, take me away!

Oh dear. I just looked out the window of the cafe where I’m working and….it’s snowing!!! sigh…..

This is my first post here. I have a modest goal this week of having 15-20 minutes of creative/ art time with the kids after school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. That’s 4 days, at least an hour altogether. Yesterday we drew with markers on boards we got at an artist workshop on Saturday. Today we did pencil sketches of a still life that my daughter set up, so we have 3 very different sketches of the same still life. It may not seem like much, but it’s the best I can do right now.

Aside from the fact that I barely have time to paint/draw/collage etc… I have noticed that my 2nd grader who is extremely creative, hardly makes anything in school anymore and has academic homework at night. Suddenly one day I realized my kindergardener and preschooler all have current drawings on the fridge while the oldest had nothing. This wouldn’t bother me if I thought her interests lay elsewhere, but that’s not the case. So this 15-20 minutes is for her and for me.

Time to get back on track!
This week I will:
-plan my son’s 4th birthday party
-create the second image in my Music photo card series
-play my guitar
-call my voice teacher to ask about resuming lessons
-read my camera manual section on metering
-finish one of the articles I have in progress

welcome!

Great to see you! Studio Mothers is the blog community of Miranda Hersey Creativity Coaching. Writer? Artist? Musician? Performer? You’re in the right place. While we primarily focus on the issues that creative mothers encounter, all are welcome.

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